I Have Loved You With An Everlasting Love – A Big Mixed Media Project

I started this project with no expectations. I have been watching videos from Mindy Lacefield’s online class Paint Like A Child and all I had in mind is to use that freedom that a 3-year-old has when they’re painting.

It is quite amazing what you can achieve when you just let yourself go and trust the process. I liked this painting so much that I actually put it up on my living room wall!!

Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Sea Glass (it does not show on the video or on the photos, but when you look closely at the paper in daylight, you can see a very slight shimmer of blue where I sprayed the mist)

I started with spreading a thick layer of black gesso with my Catalyst tool to create some textures. some parts of the paper had thick streaks of black gesso and it took AGES to dry, even with the hairdryer set on Hot!!

I then scribbled with various colours of oil pastels to create a messy background.

I created some splatters all over the page by splattering white acrylic ink with the bottle’s dropper, then dried them with the hairdryer.

Using my Flesh Pink oil pastel, I drew an oval for a face and drew the placement for the rest of the body. I got inspired to draw her hand reaching up (it came with the flow!!) so I had the idea of her spreading love to something above – a bird.
As the oil pastel didn’t give a nice finish for her skin, I used acrylic paint to even it out, colour her hair and her dress, and created her face features and shading with my oil pastels.

I created the bird in the same way and added some hearts in acrylic paint to link them together. I shaded with my oil pastels again and used them also to create some kind of subtle halo around them so they didn’t seem so sharp.

I created some clouds dipping cotton balls into white gesso, and lightly dabbed on the page to create soft clouds, rubbing when I found the dab too harsh. I then applied some glitter paint in Chandelier on the clouds and around the hearts, touching also around the bird and the girl’s arm to create some connection between them.

I was trying to thing of a quote or a saying about spreading love and I remembered a quote (from the Bible?) I saw on my way back from work on a poster at a Christian coffee shop where I live, and that I had written down in my notebook (I do crazy things like that! Lol!) – I have loved you with an everlasting love. That was it; it was the one. It felt perfect for this project.
I wrote the beginning of the quote using pink puffy paint, and the rest – the main words I wanted to emphasize – in block letters using my Tipp Ex corrector pen. I have been using it regularly instead of my Sharpie every time I wanted to use white as my Sharpie is leaking. I have to say, I really like using my TippEx white pen. It gives a really nice scratchy effect when I use it (I’m not particularly gentle with my pens; I don’t do neat and precise very well!). And then filled in the block words with puffy paint, acrylic paint and glitter paint.

That’s pretty much my process in a nutshell for that project.

It is now proudly stuck on my living room wall and the light from my window really makes the glitter subtly shine. So I’m happy!!

I hope you enjoy watching this step by step project, and that it inspires you to grab your paints and pastels, and paint like a child…

Don’t forget to like the video (if you do!) and subscribe/follow my channel. 😉